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Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Surgery

Preventing injuries during surgery due to technical mistakes

You’ve probably heard the oft-repeated charge of “alternative” medicine advocates. If you get into a debate or conversation with one, you can almost count on seeing or hearing it before too long. Indeed, we heard a variant of this very claim yesterday coming from über-woomeister supreme Deepak Chopra. I’m referring, of course, to the rant […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Science Skepticism/critical thinking

The return of the living Choprawoo

I was originally planning to do a real science post today. Indeed, there are at least two or three interesting studies that have been released in the last month or two that I’ve been meaning to write up, you know, to lose the snark and make this a real Science Blog. True, having a little […]

Categories
Bioethics Medicine

Doctors as drug reps

Fellow ScienceBlogger Abel Pharmboy over at Terra Sig pointed me in the direction of a rather fascinating and disturbing article about physicians being recruited as “thought leaders” by pharmaceutical companies. Abel’s discussion is well worth reading for yourself, but I thought I’d chime in my two cents, as always. From a surgeon’s perspective, these sorts […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Cries the antivaccinationist: Why are we injecting TOXINS into our babies?

While contemplating the burning stupidity that is Jenny McCarthy over the weekend as she mindlessly parroted some of the worst misinformation of the antivaccine movement and assured an interviewer that she would , all the while solemnly proclaiming that, were she to have another child she “”wouldn’t vaccinate at all, never, ever,” all the while […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Post-holiday “The stupid, it burns,” part 2: Denis MacEoin

I’ve never been able to understand advocates of homeopathy. I just have difficulty understanding how otherwise intelligent people can fall for the bad science, the logical fallacies, and the magical thinking necessary to believe that homeopathy is anything other than glorified water, an elaborate, ritualized placebo. I can understand how such an idea may have […]